


ad astra per aspera

by DetectiveJoan



Category: The Far Meridian (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, POV Second Person, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, background Ruth/Tattered Woman, like five words of gratuitous Spanish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21701275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveJoan/pseuds/DetectiveJoan
Summary: On your eighteenth birthday Peri bakes you a cake, and you blow out the candles without knowing exactly what you’re wishing for.
Relationships: Peri/Ruth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	ad astra per aspera

When you’re seventeen the wanting is easy, because you think you practically have it all already, because you’re not experienced enough to know what you’re missing. 

You can reach out every day and hold Peri’s hand as you walk the crooked path to her cliff-side home, and you can make her smile just by half-singing a few bars of some old folk song you learned as a kid, and on clear nights you can scoot up close to her under the guise of guiding her gaze to the shape of constellations you’ve already shown her a dozen times over. You can be satisfied saying _hey starshine_ in the same casual tone of voice that tu tía uses when she calls su esposa _mi amore._

Sure, sometimes you wonder what Peri would do if you kissed her, if you gathered up the courage to pull her even closer and press your lips against her skin, but it’s an idle curiosity. 

You’ve never kissed anyone before.

On your eighteenth birthday Peri bakes you a cake, and you blow out the candles without knowing exactly what you’re wishing for. 

*

You’re not alone after her, but there is a very particular flavor of loneliness in missing her. 

You learn through other people, through other women, what you could have wished for back then: the soft comfort of her arms wrapped around your waist from behind, the thrill of _i love you’s_ whispered into your skin, the grounding confidence of looking at a person and knowing they’re yours and you’re theirs and that isn’t going to change until you let it. 

Not that the wishing is all that you do.

You have a life. You have a job, and then you have a degree, and then you have a career. One day, you have a beautiful woman who comes from nowhere, who brushes her fingers against the tattered edges of your heart and offers to show you how to feel less hollow, and then you have 

a star

in your hands

“Have you ever seen something so lovely, my dear?” she asks. 

You cage the star between your fingers like a firefly from a perfect evening. 

*

Soon enough you have a handful of stars, then a jarful, then a bagful.

By then you also have the taste of the tattered woman on your tongue, and her crooned terms of endearment echoing in your ears.

You don’t particularly want her even though you have her; it’s a novel feeling.

* 

That’s how it is when Peri finds you, and there are so many things you can’t bring yourself to tell her.

Like: she deserves someone better than you. 

Like: it used to be that you would think of her every time you reached into the firmament to pluck out a star, that you dreamt every night about stringing them into a bracelet to tie around her wrist, but lately you’ve remembered that you can’t gift something that isn’t yours to own in the first place. 

Like: you might have given too many pieces of yourself away already; you might not have enough of yourself left to give her. 

She kisses you anyway.

She leaves you anyway.


End file.
